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Quantifying biological processes producing nitrous oxide in soil using a mechanistic model

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Abstract

Soil nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Many processes produce N2O in soil and the production rate of each process is affected by climatic-edaphic factors, making the soil-to-atmosphere N2O flux extremely dynamic. Experimental approaches, including natural and enriched isotopic methods, have been developed to separate and quantify the N2O production from different processes. However, these methods are often costly and tedious, hampering their wide application. This study aimed to develop a mechanistic model quantifying the soil N2O production from nitrifier nitrification (NN), nitrifier denitrification (ND), and heterotrophic denitrification (HD), which are considered as the most important biological processes, and to investigate how climatic-edaphic factors affect N2O production from individual process as well as total N2O production. The developed model demonstrated its robustness and capability by reliably reproducing the N2O production from NN, ND, and HD in different types of soils under various moisture contents or oxygen concentrations. The model simulations unraveled how environmental conditions and soil properties control the total N2O production rate by variably regulating individual processes. Therefore, the mechanistic model can potentially elucidate the large spatiotemporal variances of in-situ soil N2O flux and improve the assessment of soil N2O emission at regional and global scales.

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Data availability

All codes and data used in this study are freely available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Klaus Butterbach-Bahl from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Ms. Hui Wang and Dr. Yiwen Liu from Tianjin University, Dr. Tao Huang from Nanjing Normal University, Dr. Qian Zhang from University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science for their constructive suggestions and comments, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments improved the paper. This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42077009) and the Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, School of Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Baoxuan Chang, Zhifeng Yan, Siliang Li & Pingqing Fu

  2. Critical Zone Observatory of Bohai Coastal Region, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Earth Critical Zone Science and Sustainable Development in Bohai Rim, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Zhifeng Yan, Siliang Li & Pingqing Fu

  3. Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, Tianjin, 300192, China

    Zhifeng Yan

  4. Hainan Key Laboratory for Sustainable Utilization of Tropical Bioresources, College of Tropical Crops, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China

    Xiaotang Ju & Xiaotong Song

  5. College of Agricultural Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 211100, China

    Yawei Li

  6. Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Xia Zhu-Barker

  7. Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53709, USA

    Xia Zhu-Barker

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  1. Baoxuan Chang
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  2. Zhifeng Yan
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  5. Yawei Li
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Contributions

All co-authors contributed to the study. BC and ZY wrote the numerical codes and run the simulations. XJ, XS, YL, and XZB helped to analyze the data. BC wrote the first draft. ZY, SL, PF, and XZ contributed to improve the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zhifeng Yan.

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Responsible Editor: Feng Zhou.

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Chang, B., Yan, Z., Ju, X. et al. Quantifying biological processes producing nitrous oxide in soil using a mechanistic model. Biogeochemistry 159, 1–14 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-022-00912-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-022-00912-0

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